In Brief

Sir: Jeremiah Walsh (letter, 30 July) believes that political integration offers "some prospect of a less bloody way of solving ethnic and other differences within Europe." Sadly, history - and current events - teach that the exact opposite is true. Democratic nations do not start wars; but every case in history of the artificial political integration of disparate nation states has ended in civil war and bloodshed. Mr Welsh's jibe about "splendid isolation" cannot disguise the fact that what is at issue is the preservation of our sovereignty.